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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29900592">I Won't Say 'So Long'</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/allineedisaquill/pseuds/allineedisaquill'>allineedisaquill</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Ghosts (TV 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Best Friends, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 18:34:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,350</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29900592</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/allineedisaquill/pseuds/allineedisaquill</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Pat is forced to confront that their time as ghosts is uncertain and indefinite, and there are things he needs to say before the day he might move on - or the day the Captain might.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Pat Butcher/The Captain (Ghosts TV 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>66</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>I Won't Say 'So Long'</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I had this idea a while ago and finally got around to writing it. For PatCap nation, who have been very kind and encouraging with my content.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It started with idle conversation one evening.</p><p>Pat and his fellow ghosts sat around and the subject arose, as it often did, of them being dead. They discussed the cons of their existence, the things they missed most about being alive, humming and agreeing when someone raised a particularly relatable point.</p><p>When Pat was still settling in, it had been a difficult topic of conversation, but since then he found it comforting to reflect on their shared state. It reminded him that at least he wasn’t alone in it.</p><p>Mary mentioned Annie, the Puritan lady that Pat had never had the chance to meet. Pat sat quietly and listened to her regale stories of their friendship, and the others joined in with their own quips of her memory. Fanny in particular seemed to have a quiet fondness for her.</p><p>Pat thought of how Annie had once been such a solid presence amongst them. It was eerie to him, then, that she was simply no more; she’d disappeared as if she’d never haunted the place. It disrupted the comfort he felt and got him thinking.</p><p>It could be any of them one day, couldn’t it? They were still none the wiser as to what actually allowed them to move on, unsure if any of the remaining ghosts could ever achieve it. The idea of haunting a place for over a hundred years - after making both the house and its people his home - only to move on was unsettling, to say the least. As much as he’d toyed with the idea of having peace one day, the more the days went on, the more he debated if it’s what he actually wanted.</p><p>Did he want to blink out of existence for good? He would die another death to the only people left who could still see him and know him. The rest would go on haunting, and as the decades passed they would mention him less until he was simply an echo, a fleeting thought, a face to blur and a voice to forget. Perhaps one day there’d be no one left at all, living or dead, to keep his memory going.</p><p>He didn’t have much, but he’d always done his best to make the most of it. He had a family of sorts, a faint sense of purpose, somewhere to call home. To move on would be to lose that, to give up his place and have all of the grief be for nought. Dying once had already cost him everything; he wasn’t sure he could do it again.</p><p>There was one person he was especially reluctant to imagine leaving, he realised, and that person was standing behind the couch across the room and looking frightfully bored. Pat watched as he paced on the spot, swagger stick tucked under his arm, eyes cast to the ceiling like he couldn’t wait to be elsewhere but couldn’t quite bring himself to leave either. He was always like that, clinging onto a sense of duty to watch over the others. Pat could hardly say he didn’t share that feeling.</p><p>The Captain had become quite special to Pat in the recent months. True as it was that they’d had their differences, it was their similarities that always brought them back together again. They thought of themselves as a little team as it happened, just the two of them against the daily antics that Button House provided. The two of them against the world, even if their world only spanned the land the house sat on. He was a steady source of sanity and decent conversation, of knowing looks and covert smiles and messages tapped in morse code when someone was particularly getting on their last nerves. If Pat was honest with himself, he wasn’t sure what he’d do without the other man.</p><p>No, Pat didn’t want to imagine leaving him behind, but an even worse thought dawned on him in that moment: the Captain could just as easily leave him behind, too. There could come a day where Pat woke up only to find the Captain had moved on peacefully in his sleep, or stepped into the light where Pat couldn’t follow.</p><p>It was a nauseating thought that left him hollow and numb while his ears rang.</p><p>“Don’t you think, Pat?” Kitty’s voice permeated through the fog in his mind. She waited expectantly for a reply to something he’d never heard, but he realised his eyes had never left the Captain.</p><p>The Captain, who stared back at him with a confused and slightly concerned frown.</p><p>Pat cleared his throat and looked away as heat crawled over the back of his neck. “Sorry, Kitty, I missed that. Miles away,” he laughed weakly and hoped nobody picked up on it. “Do I think what?”</p><p>She brightened and repeated herself, all too happy, and Pat tried to put the thoughts to the back of his mind.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>It didn’t work. </p><p>The group dispersed around 9 pm, but Pat remained on the sofa with his legs drawn up beneath him. He chewed his lip in thought and he landed back on the Captain - his friend, his teammate, <em> Cap</em> - and felt his stomach flip uneasily. </p><p>There was one more thing he had to be honest with himself about, and that was the fact that he was completely and hopelessly in love with him.</p><p>He hadn’t wanted to admit it at first, of course he hadn’t. It was the first time he’d loved anyone since he’d died and been torn from his wife as a result, and the guilt reared its ugly head despite how Carol had moved on. Once it had settled with him, though, once it had made a home in his heart and refused to budge, he had accepted it for what it was. He loved the Captain, and every precious minute they spent in each other’s presence was time Pat adored.</p><p>The Captain could move on tomorrow and Pat would never get to tell him.</p><p>With a deep sigh, he worried at the tails of his scarf. </p><p>“You’ve been awfully quiet tonight,” the Captain said as he sat down beside Pat, and Pat wanted nothing more than for the sofa to swallow him whole. “Barely said two words and usually - and I mean this respectfully, Pat - we can’t shut you up.” </p><p>Pat glanced at him and found the familiar half-smile, the one that showed the hint of the Captain’s teeth and forced the lines around his eyes to deepen. He couldn’t help but smile back, some of his tension leaving him as he did. </p><p>“Sorry,” he offered, letting go of his scarf and folding his hands neatly in his lap instead. “Just...got a lot on my mind. You know how it is sometimes.” </p><p>The Captain hummed and settled himself in better, reclined against the sofa back with one leg crossed over his knee. “Was it the cheerful conversation that did it for you?” He asked wryly, an eyebrow cocked. “Can’t imagine why.”</p><p>“I don’t usually mind, to be honest,” Pat said.</p><p>“So what’s different about today, then?”</p><p>Pat blew out a breath, unsure of where to begin. How could he start to tell the Captain that he wanted to hold onto him - to take him in his hands and anchor him to the plane they shared, if only for enough time to get to truly love him? If they only got to have a decade or two before one of them departed - if they ever did - Pat would take it over never getting the privilege at all. Pat wished to learn what made him laugh and cry and fill to the brim with joy. Had he ever broken a bone as a boy? Was there a record that brought back a certain memory? Did he hold flowers under the chins of his friends? What meal would he have again if he could only choose one, and did it remind him of home? He wanted to know his every nook and cranny so that he might remember those things long after he was gone, to let them fill his crevices too until they overflowed; he would never be empty again.</p><p>He knew he would never forget his face or the sound of his voice, and could never let his memory fade as long as he was still present. He was sure of less and less those days, but that much was clear and true.</p><p>He’d zoned out again, mind drifting until he stared at the wall ahead with unshed tears. It was only the touch of the Captain’s hand to his arm that brought him back again. </p><p>“Sorry,” he whispered, startled, and brought the heel of a hand to his eyes after lowering his glasses briefly.</p><p>The Captain was on alert. Pat could tell from his posture, the way he looked at the door discretely to check for eavesdroppers before he leant in. “What’s going on?” He asked, brow furrowed deep. “Pat?”</p><p>He wanted to run and hide, to say “it’s nothing” and leave it alone, but the pressing thought that they had an unnumbered amount of days left together forced him to remain rooted in place. It could be forever or it could be a day, and either way Pat wasn’t keen on wasting it. He had enough regrets.</p><p>“I’ve been thinking,” he started, hands wringing together anxiously. “We don’t know how long we’ve got here, do we?” It was a fairly loaded question, he knew, even without giving the context away just yet.</p><p>The Captain considered it. “No, I suppose we don’t.” He squinted. “Why?” </p><p>Pat sniffed. “There’s things I want to say. You know, things I’ve never said. I’ve always chickened out before I could, but I’d never forgive myself if I missed the chance.” He dared to look at the Captain then, but the man just sat still and straight, perplexed.</p><p>“I don’t understand,” he said. “What have you never said, and to who?”</p><p>It drew out a laugh, like bubbles in sweet lemonade rising up his throat. “I’m talking to you, aren’t I? You daft sod.”</p><p>He wasn’t quite smiling, but the Captain’s face softened even as his grip on his stick became tight. He twisted it a few times. “Well I haven’t got all day, Patrick, so you can tell me now if it can’t wait.” To the untrained ear it might have sounded nonplussed, like he could take or leave whatever Pat had to say, but Pat knew the hint of strain and hidden depths to that voice. The line between his brows hadn’t let up either, a sure sign that he was as curious as he was nervous.</p><p>Perhaps there was more the Captain had never said, either.</p><p>Pat stared down at his own hands and wished someone else’s fingers could fill the spaces between them. “I was thinking about how either one of us could move on, even if we don’t know how or when. And then I thought well, out of everyone here, I’d be lost without you.” He said it quietly, letting it wash over them both like a warm tide.</p><p>When the wave retreated, it left the Captain blinking, frozen. “Me?”</p><p>“Mm,” Pat hummed and looked up. “You’re probably my best mate, you know?” Something about that made the Captain’s face flicker, and Pat realised hastily that it didn’t tell the whole truth of the matter. He cleared his throat. “But it’s more than that,” he corrected quickly. “You… It’s more than that. It is.”</p><p>The Captain hadn’t moved in what felt like an eternity, but his head tilted just barely and he looked for all the world like he was trying to solve a difficult puzzle. “Either I’m being very slow or you’re speaking in riddles,” he groused.</p><p>“I’m not meaning to,” Pat said. “It’s just hard to say. I’m trying my best.”</p><p>“Well try harder, man!” The Captain insisted, voice slightly higher.</p><p>“Fine! I <em> love </em> you!” </p><p>Well. There it was. </p><p>They stared at each other for one moment - exposing, horrifying, earth-shattering - and then Pat averted his gaze and felt his fingers start to tremble. His vision swam a little, too. He’d said it and he couldn’t take it back, and though the need to run returned, his body felt like pure lead.</p><p>Pat’s chest heaved. “Sorry,” he said, “I shouldn’t have—”</p><p>“Do you mean it?” </p><p>“What?” It was Pat’s turn to stare in confusion.</p><p>“<em>Do you mean it?</em>” The Captain asked again, each word slow, deliberate, clipped.</p><p>“Of course I bloody mean it!” Pat answered wildly. “Wouldn’t have said it otherwise, would I? I haven’t got this het up over it just to<em> not mean it. </em> What sort of question is that?” He was lashing out to cover his own vulnerability and he knew it, and God, it wasn’t how he wanted any of it to go.</p><p>“Pat.”</p><p>His name. One word, spoken softly, desperately, bleeding the frustration from Pat in one fell swoop and coaxing him to meet the Captain’s eyes again. When he did, he found them glassy and unsure; hopeful, but so utterly terrified.</p><p>He hadn’t a clue what to do, but he couldn’t sit and do nothing. So he reached out and curled his fingers over the top of the Captain’s where they still gripped the leather of his stick. </p><p>“I mean it,” he tried again, gentler that time. “You mean the world to me, Cap, and I know it might sound completely unreasonable and selfish but I don’t want you to go. I don't want you to move on and leave me here by myself, but if you have to one day, then I want you to know this first.” He expelled a breath, so shaky and afraid. “If that’s okay.”</p><p>“Of course it’s— Good<em> lord, </em> Pat.” He tipped his head back and blinked away tears, laughing in spite of himself. “I don’t know what to say,” he said when he brought his gaze back down again, searching Pat’s eyes for any sort of guidance. The Captain always sought to be the leader, to take charge, but in that moment he needed Pat to show him the way. “I’ve never— You’re the first to ever say such a thing. Forgive me.” </p><p>Pat squeezed the tense hands under his touch, willed the knuckles to become less tight and whitened. “Don’t worry,” he soothed, thumbs grazing the raised mounds. He slowly regained his footing once he knew the Captain held him in his heart, too. “I didn’t mean to just...spring it on you like that. I was trying to be delicate about it.”</p><p>“Partly my fault,” the Captain said.</p><p>Pat just shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’ve said it now.”</p><p>“You have.” </p><p>“And how do we feel about it?” Pat wondered. “Talk to me, Cap.”</p><p>The Captain paused in thought, and then he finally, surely said, “If those things make you selfish, then I’m just as guilty. That’s how I feel.”</p><p>“You mean—?”</p><p>“I love you too. <em> Yes.</em>” He swallowed, eyes landing on the hands that covered his. “I never imagined I’d get to say any of this out loud. Quite a day.”</p><p>Just like that, Pat was laughing again, shoulders shaking. “You’re telling me. Come here,” he said, and without another moment of doubt, he slid his hands up from the Captain’s until they could pull him in by the shoulders. He didn’t stop until he was holding the other man tight, a palm drawn up the back seam of his uniform jacket and finally resting on his neck. Pat’s own face rested against the side of his.</p><p>“I didn’t even know this was possible,” the Captain murmured, his large hands splayed on Pat’s back and warming him where they lay. “With you, I mean.”</p><p>“Full of surprises, me,” Pat said back, squeezing him gently. </p><p>“So it seems. Although, until recently, I never knew it was possible for myself, either,” the Captain admitted.</p><p>It had occurred to Pat that that was the case, hence his attempts at subtlety. “I’m glad it is, though,” he said. </p><p>“That makes two of us.”</p><p>Pat smiled and turned his face inward, breathing in wool and sandalwood and closing his eyes. It became another facet of the Captain’s he could commit to memory, lock it up in his chest where it could be permanently home. Tears pressed to his closed eyelids that he didn’t allow to fall, but they shone through in the croak of his voice. “I mean it, Cap,” he said. “I don’t want to lose you.” Hadn’t they lost enough? Was it too much to ask to get to keep each other?</p><p>“I know,” the Captain said carefully, a measured but gentle response. “Nor I you. I can’t make promises though, can I? You know that I can’t, however much I’d like to. Which I would, for the record. I would.”</p><p>“I know,” Pat echoed sadly.</p><p>The Captain sighed and prised them apart, but he let his hands come to cup Pat’s elbows and squeeze. “Less of that. Christ, you’ll have me as soft as you, but come on, Pat. Be fair; by any sane belief, we should never have met at all. Yet here we are.”</p><p>There they were.</p><p>Pat couldn’t help but let his lips curl at the corners with a smile, because the sunny outlook was<em> his </em> thing. The tables had turned, however, and it had always been a sweet and natural thing how they mirrored each other so well. They learned the best parts of each other and let them melt with their own tendencies. He hoped that one day, if he was lucky, perhaps it’d be impossible to separate them and tell them apart.</p><p>“Suppose so,” Pat said. “You’re right. Sorry.”</p><p>“I imagine not all ghosts are as lucky as you and I. We complain about the company we’re burdened with sometimes, while others are out there totally alone. But I’m here with you. I will be for as long as I can,” the Captain said quietly, speaking past a clear lump in his throat. </p><p>It could be worse, the Captain was trying to say, but at least they had each other if nothing else. It wasn’t an option for everyone, and they should take it for what it was and make the most of it - <em> together. </em></p><p>“Sounds a bit like a promise to me,” Pat said, face breaking into a fresh smile. It was a touch shy, but the teasing tone made up for it.</p><p>The Captain snorted. “Hardly. Just stating the facts.”</p><p>“Nope. Definitely a promise. ‘Pat, I promise to haunt Button House with you forever’. That’s basically what you just said.” Making light was vastly preferable to the heavy truth that they could no more make that promise then than they could five minutes before. It was impossible.</p><p>The mirth still lit up the Captain’s eyes, however, brilliantly bright blue and creased at the corners in the way Pat couldn’t adore more if he tried. “That’s— That’s not at all what I—”</p><p>Pat kissed him then, and the end of the sentence was lost to it. </p><p>He pulled back almost as quickly as he’d leaned in, but the Captain surprised them both by chasing his lips until they could meet again.</p><p>In Pat’s mind, their first kiss was unhurried and sweet, but in reality it was fuelled by the knowledge that one day they might very well have to part. So the kisses came short and fast like any could be their last, the Captain’s hands framing Pat’s jaw while Pat’s fingers held his lapels tight. Each desperate press of lips fought away the existential worry, eased Pat’s thoughts of what-ifs and uncertainties until all he knew was the burn of a moustache against his own.</p><p>Pat was more than soothed when their foreheads rested briefly together, and he quietly murmured, “The others will be wondering where we’ve gotten to.”</p><p>“Probably, yes,” the Captain agreed. “Should we check on them?”</p><p>“In a minute,” Pat said, and brought their mouths back together with a smile.</p><p>If they couldn’t have forever, they could at least have that.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Come say hi: patcaps.tumblr.com</p></blockquote></div></div>
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